Target is installing app-based indoor mapping in its stores, making it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for.
Following a 2015 test, the U.S. retail chain is integrating beacon and Bluetooth technology with its mobile app. The app will show the shopper’s location in real time as they move about the store (with a familiar blue dot), and display nearby sales and deals.
Shoppers will also be able to find an item on the map through their digital shopping list.
Target describes the new technology as “a GPS for your shopping cart.”
“Just click on an item from your list and the app will indicate on a store map the precise aisle where you can find your item,” said Target chief information and digital officer Mike McNamara.
The beacons are a function of new, energy-efficient LED lighting that Target is installing in its stores.
Another mobile enhancement is Target’s integration of its savings app Cartwheel within its main store app. (Cartwheel is more popular than the primary Target app.) Target will use the beacon technology to highlight which of its Cartwheel deals are near a shopper’s current location. In the months to come, the app will support mobile payments at checkout.
The new indoor location technology will be live in across half of the chain of 1,800 stores in time for the 2017 holiday season.
Taoglas has launched a range of small-form-factor ultra-wideband (UWB) antennas specifically designed to enable centimeter-level positioning and angle-of-arrival applications.
The FXUWB10, UWC.01 and UWCCP.01 ultra-wideband antennas by Taoglas.
Applications include asset tracking, follow-me drones, healthcare monitoring, smart home services and other applications that demand high-performance indoor localization capabilities, the company said.
The antennas offer high efficiencies across a wide spectrum of frequency bands, from 3 GHz to 10 GHz.
Indoor wireless positioning has long been hampered by technologies that were not designed for this purpose, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and assisted GPS.
Ultra-Wideband. UWB is a low-power digital wireless technology that offers significant increases in location precision and range while transmitting large amounts of digital data short distances over a wide spectrum of frequency bands. UWB’s low-power requirements offer increased battery life of sensors and tags, leading to reduction in overall operational costs.
Taoglas’ range of UWB antennas, designed in Taoglas’ Munich, Germany, engineering center, features both state-of-the-art flexible embedded UWB antennas and UWB embedded SMT chip antennas. According to the company, the flexible FXUWB range of antennas were developed utilizing a “peel and stick” assembly process, attaching securely to non-metal surfaces via 3M adhesive with a flexible micro-coaxial cable mounting.
The UWB chip antennas are designed to be surface mounted directly onto a printed circuit board (PCB). Both series of antennas help designers future-proof devices, keeping costs low while covering all common UWB commercial bands.
“Today’s emerging applications require very precise indoor localization of assets, objects and people,” said Ronan Quinlan, co-CEO for Taoglas. “UWB can work as a type of ‘indoor GPS’ to help solve the precision dilemma for indoor applications, bringing much greater levels of precision than current technologies. We optimize complex antenna performance parameters such as the Group Delay, Polarization and Fidelity Factor. Taoglas’ first-to-market line of UWB antennas are designed to help our customers capitalize on this need for real-time precision localization.”
Autonomous Antenna. One antenna that Taoglas co-developed exclusively with DecaWave is the UWCCP.01 circularly polarized chip antenna, a mass-market antenna specifically designed to enable a new generation of autonomous applications.
The DecaWave DW1000 chip.
The UWB antennas were designed for use with the DecaWave DW1000 chip and are also compatible with any other UWB sensor modules on the market, the company added. Since its launch in December 2013, more than 3.5 million units of the DW1000 have shipped across multiple industries.
From real-time location of people and assets in factories, hospitals and mines, to automotive keyless entry systems, to drones, connected home and sports, the accurate location and secure communications capability of the DW1000 has already taken numerous applications to new heights.
“Antennas play a key role in our customers’ applications. Performance is a given for customers but the capability to adapt to the constraints of the applications — size, shape, electronics environment — is equally important as end products get smaller and smaller,” said Ciaran Connell, CEO and co-founder, DecaWave. “DecaWave is really pleased to partner with Taoglas, as their expertise is not only in delivering high-performance, off-the-shelf antennas, but also to provide customization services that will be highly beneficial to our customers.”
StepInside and partner Flowscape to help Sweden HQ team easily find available workspace and colleagues
The Senion StepInside indoor positioning system has been deployed in the 500,000-square-foot Kista (Stockholm) headquarters of telecom company Ericsson.
Using personal or work-issued smartphones, more than 4,000 employees working throughout 20 floors distributed over four buildings can now use a corporate app to easily find available rooms and spaces to work, the company said.
The indoor positioning system is designed by Senion’s longtime partner Flowscape. With StepInside integrated into the Flowscape platform, the two companies will help Ericsson employees reduce wasted time searching for people, places or things, increasing productivity.
The StepInside software development kit (SDK) offers location readings in latitude, longitude and floor level in real time. The SDK can easily be integrated into any smartphone application. StepInside relies on an advanced sensor fusion algorithm that works with the smartphone’s movement and radio sensors to provide accurate and robust positioning.
“Indoor positioning technology is perfect for large offices with multiple floors, offices, and meeting spaces — the bigger and more intricate the better,” said Christian Lundquist, CEO and co-founder of Senion. “We’re seeing that large companies are taking serious measures to combat friction in order to increase both productivity and employee satisfaction. We now aid Ericsson in giving back time to their employees so they can be more efficient in their day-to-day work.”
The implementation of StepInside at Ericsson is part of the company’s larger global platform designed to enable rapid IoT application development.
“We looked carefully at the benefits of using IPS [indoor positioning system] in our offices, and determined the system would pay for itself in productivity savings alone,” said Magnus Arlidsson, global head application platform for IoT at Ericsson. “Our initial roll-out focuses on productivity improvements by saving employees time they might waste searching for things, such as conference rooms or places to work.”
The system as implemented today is the starting point for a bigger roll-out with additional workplace enhancements at Ericsson.
Senion’s comprehensive IPS services include analytics, wayfinding, geofencing, friend finder and tracking. With more than 300 indoor positioning system installations globally, Senion has worked closely with shopping malls, hospitals, corporate campuses and more to improve workflows. Senion is headquartered in Linkoping, Sweden, and San Francisco.
OVER THE YEARS, many philosophers tried to describe the phenomenon of inertia but it was Newton, in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, who unified the states of rest and movement in his First Law of Motion. One rendering of this law states: Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. Newton didn’t actually use the word inertia in describing the phenomenon, but that is how we now refer to it.
In his other two laws of motion, Newton describes how a force (including that of gravity) can accelerate a body. And as we all know, acceleration is the rate of change of velocity, and velocity is the rate of change of position. So, if the acceleration vector of a body can be precisely measured, then a double integration of it can provide an estimate of the body’s position. That sounds quite straightforward, but the devil is in the details. Not only do we have to worry about the constants of integration (or the initial conditions of velocity and position), but also the direction of the acceleration vector and its orthogonal components. Nevertheless, the first attempts at mechanizing the equations of motion to produce what we call an inertial measurement unit or IMU were made before and during World War II to guide rockets.
Nowadays, IMUs typically consist of three orthogonal accelerometers and three orthogonal rate-gyroscopes to provide the position and orientation of the body to which it is attached. And ever since the first units were developed, scientists and engineers have worked to miniaturize them. We now have micro-electro-mechanical systems (or MEMS) versions of them so small that they can be housed in small packages with dimensions of a few centimeters or embedded in other devices.
One problem with IMUs, and with the less-costly MEMS IMUs in particular, is that they have biases that grow with time. One way to limit these biases is to periodically use another technique, such as GNSS, to ameliorate their effects. But what if GNSS is unavailable? Well, in this month’s column we take a look at an ingenious technique that makes use of how the human body works to develop an accurate pedestrian navigation system — one whose accuracy has been checked using drone imagery. As they might say in New York, “Hey, I’m walking (with accuracy) here!”
Satellite navigation systems have achieved great success in personal positioning applications.
Nowadays, GNSS is an essential tool for outdoor navigation, but locating a user’s position in degraded and denied indoor environments is still a challenging task. During the past decade, methodologies have been proposed based on inertial sensors for determining a person’s location to solve this problem.
One such solution is a personal pedestrian dead-reckoning (PDR) system, which helps in obtaining a seamless indoor/outdoor position. Built-in sensors measure the acceleration to determine pace count and estimate the pace length to predict position with heading information coming from angular sensors such as magnetometers or gyroscopes. PDR positioning solutions find many applications in security monitoring, personal services, navigation in shopping centers and hospitals and for guiding blind pedestrians.
Several dead-reckoning navigation algorithms for use with inertial measurement units (IMUs) have been proposed. However, these solutions are very sensitive to the alignment of the sensor units, the inherent instrumental errors, and disturbances from the ambient environment — problems that cause accuracy to decrease over time. In such situations, additional sensors are often used together with an IMU, such as ZigBee radio beacons with position estimated from received signal strength.
In this article, we present a PDR indoor positioning system we designed, tested and analyzed. It is based on the pace detection of a foot-mounted IMU, with the use of extended Kalman filter (EKF) algorithms to estimate the errors accumulated by the sensors.
PDR DESIGN AND POSITIONING METHOD
Our plan in designing a pedestrian positioning system was to use a high-rate IMU device strapped onto the pedestrian’s shoe together with an EKF-based framework. The main idea of this project was to use filtering algorithms to estimate the errors (biases) accumulated by the IMU sensors. The EKF is updated with velocity and angular rate measurements by zero-velocity updates (ZUPTs) and zero-angular-rate updates (ZARUs) separately detected when the pedestrian’s foot is on the ground. Then, the sensor biases are compensated with the estimated errors.
Therefore, the frequent use of ZUPT and ZARU measurements consistently bounds many of the errors and, as a result, even relatively low-cost sensors can provide useful navigation performance. The PDR framework, developed in a Matlab environment, consists of five algorithms:
Initial alignment that calculates the initial attitude with the static data of accelerometers and magnetometers during the first few minutes.
IMU mechanization algorithm to compute the navigation parameters (position, velocity and attitude).
Pace detection algorithm to determine when the foot is on the ground; that is, when the velocity and angular rates of the IMU are zero.
ZUPT and ZARU, which feed the EKF with the measured errors when pacing is detected.
EFK estimation of the errors, providing feedback to the IMU mechanization algorithm.
INITIAL ALIGNMENT OF IMU SENSOR
The initial alignment of an IMU sensor is accomplished in two steps: leveling and gyroscope compassing. Leveling refers to getting the roll and pitch using the acceleration, and gyroscope compassing refers to obtaining heading using the angular rate.
However, the bias and noise of gyroscopes are larger than the value of the Earth’s rotation rate for the micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) IMU, so the heading has a significant error. In our work, the initial alignment of the MEMS IMU is completed using the static data of accelerometers and magnetometers during the first few minutes, and a method for heading was developed using the magnetometers.
PACE-DETECTION PROCESS
When a person walks, the movement of a foot-mounted IMU can be divided into two phases. The first one is the swing phase, which means the IMU is on the move. The second one is the stance phase, which means the IMU is on the ground. The angular and linear velocity of the foot-mounted IMU must be very close to zero in the stance phase. Therefore, the angular and linear velocity of the IMU can be nulled and provided to the EKF. This is the main idea of the ZUPT and ZARU method.
There are a few algorithms in the literature for step detection based on acceleration and angular rate. In our work, we use a multi-condition algorithm to complete the pace detection by using the outputs of accelerometers and gyroscopes.
As the acceleration of gravity, the magnitude of the acceleration ( |αk| ) for epoch k must be between two thresholds. If
(1)
then, condition 1 is
(2)
with units of meters per second squared. The acceleration variance must also be above a given threshold. With
(3)
where is a mean acceleration value at time k, and s is the size of the averaging window (typically, s = 15 epochs), the variance is computed by:
. (4)
The second condition, based on the standard deviation of the acceleration, is computed by:
. (5)
The magnitude of the angular rate ( ) given by:
(6)
must be below a given threshold:
. (7)
The three logical conditions must be satisfied at the same time, which means logical ANDs are used to combine the conditions:
C = C1 & C2 & C3. (8)
The final logical result is obtained using a median filter with a neighboring window of 11 samples. A logical 1 denotes the stance phase, which means the instrumented-foot is on the ground.
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The presented method for PDR navigation was tested in both indoor and outdoor environments. For the outdoor experiment (the indoor test is not reported here), three separate tests of normal, fast and slow walking speeds with the IMU attached to a person’s foot (see FIGURE 1) were conducted on the roof of the Institute of Space Science and Technology building at Nanchang University (see FIGURE 2). The IMU was configured to output data at a sampling rate of 100 Hz for each test.
For experimental purposes, the user interface was prepared in a Matlab environment. After collection, the data was processed according to our developed indoor pedestrian dead-reckoning system. The processing steps were as follows: Setting the sampling rate to 100 Hz; setting initial alignment time to 120 seconds; downloading the IMU data and importing the collected data at the same time; selecting the error compensation mode (ZARU + ZUPT as the measured value of the EKF); downloading the actual path with a real measured trajectory with which to compare the results (in the indoor-environment case).
For comparison of the IMU results in an outdoor environment, a professional drone was used (see FIGURE 3) to take a vertical image of the test area (see FIGURE 4). Precise raster rectification of the image was carried out using Softline’s C-GEO v.8 geodetic software. This operation is usually done by loading a raster-image file and entering a minimum of two control points (for a Helmert transformation) or a minimum of three control points (for an affine transformation) on the raster image for which object space coordinates are known. These points are entered into a table. After specifying a point number, appropriate coordinates are fetched from the working set. Next, the points in the raster image corresponding to the entered control points are indicated with a mouse.
FIGURE 3. Professional drone. (Photo: DJI)
For our test, we measured four ground points using a GNSS receiver (marked in black in Figure 4), to be easily recognized on the raster image (when zoomed in). A pre-existing base station on the roof was also used. To compute precise static GPS/GLONASS/BeiDou positions of the four ground points, we used post-processing software. During the GNSS measurements, 16 satellites were visible. After post-processing of the GNSS data, the estimated horizontal standard deviation for all points did not exceed 0.01 meters. The results were transformed to the UTM (zone 50) grid system. For raster rectification, we used the four measured terrain points as control points. After the Helmert transformation process, the final coordinate fitting error was close to 0.02 meters.
For comparing the results of the three different walking-speed experiments, IMU stepping points (floor lamps) were chosen as predetermined route points with known UTM coordinates, which were obtained after raster image rectification in the geodetic software (marked in red in Figure 4).
After synchronization of the IMU (with ZUPT and ZARU) and precise image rectification, positions were determined and are plotted in Figure 4. The trajectory reference distance was 15.1 meters.
PDR positioning results of the slow-walking test with ZARU and ZUPT corrections were compared to the rectified raster-image coordinates. The coordinate differences are presented in FIGURE 5 and TABLE 1.
FIGURE 5. Differences in the coordinates between the IMU slow-walking positioning results and the rectified raster-image results. (Chart: Authors)
Table 1. Summary of coordinate differences between the IMU slow-walking positioning results and the rectified raster-image results. (Data: Authors)
The last two parts of the experiment were carried out to test normal and fast walking speeds. The comparisons of the IMU positioning results to the “true” positions extracted from the calibrated raster image are presented in FIGURES 6 and 7 and TABLES 2 and 3.
FIGURE 6. Differences in the coordinates between the IMU normal-walking positioning results and the rectified raster-image results. (Chart: Authors)FIGURE 7. Differences in the coordinates between the IMU fast-walking positioning results and the rectified raster-image results. (Chart: Authors)Table 2. Summary of coordinate differences between the IMU normal-walking positioning results and the rectified raster-image results. (Data: Authors)Table 3. Summary of coordinate differences between the IMU fast-walking positioning results and the rectified raster-image results. (Data: Authors)
From the presented results, we can observe that the processed data of the 100-Hz IMU device provides a decimeter-level of accuracy for all cases. The best results were achieved with a normal walking speed, where the positioning error did not exceed 0.16 meters (standard deviation). It appears that the sampling rate of 100 Hz makes the system more responsive to the authenticity of the gait.
However, we are aware that the test trajectory was short, and that, due to the inherent drift errors of accelerometers and gyroscopes, the velocity and positions obtained by these sensors may be reliable only for a short period of time. To solve this problem, we are considering additional IMU position updating methods, especially for indoor environments.
CONCLUSIONS
We have presented results of our inertial-based pedestrian navigation system (or PDR) using an IMU sensor strapped onto a person’s foot. An EKF was applied and updated with velocity and angular rate measurements from ZUPT and ZARU solutions.
After comparing the ZUPT and ZARU combined final results to the coordinates obtained after raster-image rectification using a four-control-point Helmert transformation, the PDR positioning results showed that the accuracy error of normal walking did not exceed 0.16 meters (at the one-standard-deviation level). In the case of fast and slow walking, the errors did not exceed 0.20 meters and 0.32 meters (both at the one-standard-deviation level), respectively (see Table 4 for combined results).
Table 4. Summary of coordinate differences between the IMU slow-, normal- and fast-walking positioning results and the rectified raster-image results. (Data: Authors)
The three sets of experimental results showed that the proposed ZUPT and ZARU combination is suitable for pace detection; this approach helps to calculate precise position and distance traveled, and estimate accumulated sensor error.
It is evident that the inherent drift errors of accelerometers and gyroscopes, and the velocity and position obtained by these sensors, may only be reliable for a short period of time. To solve this problem, we are considering additional IMU position-updating methods, especially in indoor environments. Our work is now focused on obtaining absolute positioning updates with other methods, such as ZigBee, radio-frequency identification, Wi-Fi and image-based systems.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work reported in this article was supported by the National Key Technologies R&D Program and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Thanks to NovAtel for providing the latest test version of its post-processing software for the purposes of this experiment. Special thanks also to students from the Navigation Group of the Institute of Space Science and Technology at Nanchang University and to Yuhao Wang for his support of drone surveying.
MANUFACTURERS
The high-rate IMU used in our work was an Xsense MTi miniature MEMS-based Attitude Heading Reference System. We also used NovAtel’s Waypoint GrafNav v. 8.60 post-processing software and a DJI Phantom 3 drone.
MARCIN URADZIŃSKI received his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Geodesy, Geospatial and Civil Engineering of the University of Warmia and Mazury (UWM), Olsztyn, Poland, with emphasis on satellite positioning and navigation. He is an assistant professor at UWM and presently is a visiting professor at Nanchang University, China. His interests include satellite positioning, multi-sensor integrated navigation and indoor radio navigation systems.
HANG GUO received his Ph.D. in geomatics and geodesy from Wuhan University, China, with emphasis on navigation. He is a professor of the Academy of Space Technology at Nanchang University. His interests include indoor positioning, multi-sensor integrated navigation systems and GNSS meteorology. As the corresponding author for this article, he may be reached at [email protected].
CLIFFORD MUGNIER received his B.A. in geography and mathematics from Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana, in 1967. He is a fellow of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and is past national director of the Photogrammetric Applications Division. He is the chief of geodesy in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. His research is primarily on the geodesy of subsidence in Louisiana and the grids and datums of the world.
FURTHER READING
• Authors’ Work on Indoor Pedestrian Navigation
“Indoor Positioning Based on Foot-mounted IMU” by H. Guo, M. Uradziński, H. Yin and M. Yu in Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences, Vol. 63, No. 3, Sept. 2015, pp. 629–634, doi: 10.1515/bpasts-2015-0074.
“Usefulness of Nonlinear Interpolation and Particle Filter in Zigbee Indoor Positioning” by X. Zhang, H. Guo, H. Wu and M. Uradziński in Geodesy and Cartography, Vol. 63, No. 2, 2014, pp. 219–233, doi: 10.2478/geocart-2014-0016.
• IMU Pedestrian Navigation
“Pedestrian Tracking Using Inertial Sensors” by R. Feliz Alonso, E. Zalama Casanova and J.G. Gómez Garcia-Bermejo in Journal of Physical Agents, Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan. 2009, pp. 35–43, doi: 10.14198/JoPha.2009.3.1.05.
“Pedestrian Tracking with Shoe-Mounted Inertial Sensors” by E. Foxlin in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 25, No. 6, Nov./Dec. 2005, pp. 38–46, doi: 10.1109/MCG.2005.140.
• Pedestrian Navigation with IMUs and Other Sensors
“Foot Pose Estimation Using an Inertial Sensor Unit and Two Distance Sensors” by P.D. Duong, and Y.S. Suh in Sensors, Vol. 15, No. 7, 2015, pp. 15888–15902, doi: 10.3390/s150715888.
“Enhancing Indoor Inertial Pedestrian Navigation Using a Shoe-Worn Marker” by M. Placer and S. Kovačič in Sensors, Vol. 13, No. 8, 2013, pp. 9836–9859, doi: 10.3390/s130809836.
“Use of High Sensitivity GNSS Receiver Doppler Measurements for Indoor Pedestrian Dead Reckoning” by Z. He, V. Renaudin, M.G. Petovello and G. Lachapelle in Sensors, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2013, pp. 4303–4326, doi: 10.3390/s130404303.
“Accurate Pedestrian Indoor Navigation by Tightly Coupling Foot-Mounted IMU and RFID Measurements” by A. Ramón Jiménez Ruiz, F. Seco Granja, J. Carlos Prieto Honorato and J. I. Guevara Rosas in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 61, No. 1, Jan. 2012, pp. 178–189, doi: 10.1109/TIM.2011.2159317.
• Pedestrian Navigation with Kalman Filter Framework
“Indoor Pedestrian Navigation Using an INS/EKF Framework for Yaw Drift Reduction and a Foot-mounted IMU” by A.R. Jiménez, F. Seco, J.C. Prieto and J. Guevara in Proceedings of WPNC’10, the 7th Workshop on Positioning, Navigation and Communication held in Dresden, Germany, March 11–12, 2010, doi: 10.1109/WPNC.2010.5649300.
“A Robust Method to Detect Zero Velocity for Improved 3D Personal Navigation Using Inertial Sensors” by Z. Xu, J. Wei, B. Zhang and W. Yang in Sensors Vol. 15, No. 4, 2015, pp. 7708–7727, doi: 10.3390/s150407708.
Orolia has synchronized a Spectracom SecureSync high-precision time server with the new Iridium Satelles Satellite Time & Location (STL) time synchronization signal powered by Iridium satellites in several indoor environments in the field. Configured with an embedded STL receiver and a small patch antenna, the SecureSync synchronized with the STL signal in several challenging indoor locations. Indoor success can be attributed in part to use of a low-Earth orbit satellite-based signal 1,000 times stronger than GPS.
The first successful synchronization was in the interior of a building in one of the most challenging urban canyons on Earth: downtown Manhattan on the 7th floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The second was in the interior of a conference center with multiple sources of potential signal interference during The Institute of Navigation event in Monterey, California. Additional successful indoor timing signal synchronization locations include MiFiD2 events near the Paris Stock Exchange, a multi-story building and inside Gibson Hall in downtown London.
More GNSS challenged locations to come, the two companies promise.
Other satellite signals — notably GNSS — have limitations indoors. The Satelles STL signal uses the narrow-band paging channels of Iridium, a one-way transmission from the satellite with a very high gain system. The STL signal is completely different from the wide band, lower gain two-way channel of the Iridium phone. The STL signal is 1,000 times stronger than GPS because it originates from the Iridium constellation of 66 satellites orbiting in a low earth orbit. It is also encrypted for high security, which greatly enhances the resilient PNT capabilities of the Spectracom product lines, specificallly the SecureSync precision time and frequency reference. SecureSync with integrated STL synchronization is available to order from the Spectracom website or by contacting a representative.
“The new STL signal is the ideal solution for those needing increased security and reliability, applications such as high frequency securities trading, financial transaction time-stamping compliance and critical infrastructure timing,” said John Fischer, vice president of Orolia for advanced R&D. “It is not only an additional signal to back up traditional GNSS, it is also stronger and more secure, adding significantly to the resiliency of high performance systems and networks that must rely on precise time synchronization.”
Having proven the ability to provide a strong and reliable alternative signal in various indoor field locations, the new globally accessible STL signal adds a significant safety net to any critical GNSS application. Adding to the mix of signals of opportunity the resiliency of positioning and timing for financial, defense and critical infrastructure is greatly enhanced.
“Orolia is focused on providing Resilient PNT solutions, and by combining and layering technology in innovative ways we help our customers meet their mission goals,” said Rohit Braggs, vice president of Orolia’s PNT networks and sources. “This new satellite-based service provides a unique signal that augments Spectracom systems, enhancing our ability to effectively mitigate emerging GPS and GNSS threats.”
Orolia is the parent company of Spectracom, McMurdo, Kannad, and Sarbe brands, focused on resilient positioning, navigation and timing (RPNT) solutions that improve the reliability, performance and safety of customers’ critical, remote or high-risk operations.
Satelles has developed and deployed a real-time PNT service based on low-Earth orbit satellites, the Iridium constellation. Satellite Time and Location (STL) signals are highly secure, penetrate deep indoors, and are available anywhere on Earth. Satelles partners with other companies to deliver secure time and location capabilities to government and commercial users worldwide.
In what was 2015’s largest location-industry deal, three German luxury auto manufacturers completed the purchase of HERE. But that wasn’t the only recent acquisition as location-based services provider TeleCommunication Systems, or TCS, was bought by Comtech Telecommunication Corp. Both deals indicate the growing, and continued growth, of location services going forward into 2016.
Three German automakers are now in the location business following the finalization of a $2.8 billion deal to buy Nokia’s HERE digital mapping company last week. Audi, BMW and Daimler are now equal owners of HERE following quick regulatory approval.
While some say there was much Nokia-driven hype about who was bidding on HERE, including Uber and Baidu, ultimately others breathed a sigh of relief that automotive companies, not Google, bought the digital mapping pioneer.
The deal, which was originally announced in early August, shows the continued value of accurate maps to the automotive industry as it transitions for connected to autonomous vehicles. In addition, the number of big suitors interested in HERE shows the rise in the potential and real market for location-based services in both smartphones and connected vehicles.
Many of the early suitors balked at HERE’s early price tag, estimated to be more than $4 billion. Uber, which some felt would be a good match for HERE because of their autonomous vehicle intentions, decided to go in another direction, buying mapping company deCarta.
While it’s too early to analyze the consequences of the deal, some analysts say it will be interesting to see if the new owners keep the mapping giant neutral to not alienate future clients.
It remains to be seen whether its competitor, TomTom, which also has been talked about as an acquisition target, should stay as an independent company or form its own consortium.
Nokia purchased HERE, the former Navteq, for $8 billion in 2007. The sale of HERE is part of Nokia’s transformation as it completes its $16.6 billion acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, which is expected to close early next year.
In another big deal since our last column, Annapolis, Md.-based TeleCommunication Systems was acquired by Comtech Telecommunication Corp. for $430.8 million deal. The deal is expected to close in March 2016.
TCS was one of the first companies to do it all in the consumer location space, buying entities in automotive navigation and also making inroads in the fleet management and indoor positioning/9-1-1 space. The company most recently was developing location technology for mobile, or m-health markets.
Cyber Security Big Connected Vehicle Concern in 2015
As we review the past year, one of the biggest connected vehicle trends in 2015 was when cyber security became real for the automakers, said Jon Allen, Booz Allen Commercial Solutions principal.
“Just as automakers are increasingly demonstrating the power of automation, their momentum is challenged by researchers showing they really can hack into vehicles. While there are engineering challenges ahead to realize the full potential of autonomy, the priority in automotive is to protect the trust of customers and regulators as autonomous capabilities are further developed,” he said. “That puts cyber at the top of the agenda.”
2016, OEMs will need to further embrace a security mindset, Allen said. “These [cyber risk] issues are solved by designing, engineering and testing your vehicle to meet defined standards. But cyber risk has an outside variable you can’t control: cyber threat actors. This means you’re not just engineering a solution — you’re fighting an adversary,” he said.
Allen said that automakers need to identify a single leader to champion vehicle cyber security, supporting them up with an integrated, cross-functional team. “That includes experts from safety, privacy, IT, legal, engineering, manufacturing, customer service and supply chain,” he said.
Autonomous vehicles tout a safety record that far surpasses today’s cars, but a cyber incident has potential to reverse that claim, Allen said. The “doomsday” scenario is attacking multiple vehicles over the air to “brick” multiple platforms, but this may be an unlikely near-term scenario, he said.
“The near-term attacks will be motivated by money. That’s why many of the largest hacks were designed to exploit personal and financial information,” Allen said.
At a Colorado Space Roundup meeting in Denver last week, Thad Allen, former Coast Guard commandant and now executive vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, said that there won’t be a “cyber Pearl Harbor” as the government and civilian entities should have had plenty of warning it was coming. Allen, who was in Denver working on the GPS Operational Control System, or OCX, also said that it would be catastrophic if the GPS infrastructure was compromised.
“If someone does something to disrupt GPS, it will affect everyone,” said Allen, who oversaw the Hurricane Katrina and Deepwater Horizon oil spill operations.
Indoor Positioning’s Big Story in 2015: Consumer Appliances?
While there were several significant tests and infrastructure rollouts, at least one analyst says the rise of indoor positioning in consumer appliances was huge. Bruce Krulwich, Grizzly Analytics founder, said that such companies as Move ‘n See are putting location chips into electronic devices.
Move ‘n See also has a camera robot, called Pixio, which follows a person moving around a sports field or other indoor site. “What’s huge about this is not the product itself — it’s hard to tell whether it will appeal to the masses or only a niche market–but I believe that it’s the first in a new trend of electronic products that enhance their capabilities by incorporating indoor location technology,” he said.
In other location news:
CalAmp Corp. said it made a $113 million offer for LoJack Corp., which is a pioneer in car theft-recovery using location technology. According to published reports, CalAmp has made three cash offers for Lojack in the past 14 months. LoJack’s car recovery systems use location technology, which seems to be a great fit for CalAmp, which offers fleet tracking software.
It’s been a good run. After eight-and-a-half years, this is my last Wireless LBS Insider column. Many thanks to Alan Cameron and Tracy Cozzens, both seasoned journalists, who steered me on the right course over the years. I will be at CES in a freelance role next month and will continue to operate my autonomous vehicle conference, Driverless.
Rover positions obtained with 2D LTE versus GPS track.
Positioning with LTE Signals
An alternative to GNSS in urban canyons can be provided by signals from cellular base stations, particularly new signals from long-term evolution (LTE) networks, since LTE coverage will be high in cities. Wide LTE downlink bandwidth provides good resolution of multipath components, which also assists positioning.
A test used a universal software radio peripheral N210 synchronized to a GPS-locked Rubidium frequency standard. A personal computer stored LTE data samples together with GNSS sentences from a u-blox LEA-6T module. A Matlab-algorithm did the complete post-processing, extracting pseudoranges for the LTE base station and calculating the position solution.
Results of a car driven on an urban route show root-mean-square value of the absolute error using LTE compared to GPS position is 43 meters.
Positioning Using LTE Signals, by Fabian Knutti, Mischa Sabathy, Marco Driusso, Heinz Mathis, and Chris Marshall. Presented at the European Navigation Conference 2015.
Seamless Indoors
Sensor Augmented Indoor Navigation and Positioning, by M. Gemelli and Keith Nicholson, Bosch Sensortec. An overview of technologies that guide us indoors in a seamless and reliable manner, highlighting key requirements for motion and pressure sensing, low-power processing, efficient code design, wireless beaconing and map matching. Fusion software needs new data sources: Bluetooth low-energy, Wi-Fi fingerprinting, magnetic fingerprinting, ultrasound. Presented at ION GNSS+ 2015.
Disturbed Ionosphere
Mitigating satellite motion in GPS monitoring of traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs), by R.W. Penney and N.K. Jackson-Booth. Discusses the impact of satellite motion on the use of compact arrays of GPS receivers for estimating the velocity of travelling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs). It is shown that satellite motion has subtle effects upon standard techniques of waveform cross-correlation, or time-difference of arrival (TDOA), which can easily lead to spurious TID velocity estimates. In Radio Science, an AGU journal.
The ION GNSS+ 2015 Conference once again fielded a jam-packed agenda of papers on subjects from world-wide constellation updates, through GNSS integrity, indoor navigation demonstrations, multi-constellation/function chipsets, interference mitigation and jamming detection, privacy issues, and many other very interesting subjects. That’s GNSS+ in the conference name, as in “plus,” denoting the many other positioning, navigation, and timing technologies it covers.
Most papers contained advanced academic research, but there were also several new industrial releases. This year ION divided and clearly differentiated sessions between “System and Application Tracks,” that is, those with more direct industry content, and “Peer-Reviewed Tracks,” the so-called “pure” research.
As always, some of the most valuable takeaways of attending ION come from the numerous unrelated, off-the-record corridor conversations: an essential element, always spontaneous and much anticipated, but something that cannot be clearly identified nor put into the program.
The conference seemed to have around the same number attendees as last year with about the same number of exhibitors, even though a few of the big booths were missing. Paradoxically, some exhibitors privately said they did better and more business this year, even with fewer attendees, according to their estimates.
SPIRIT Navigation from Moscow did not have a booth, but Ruslan Budnik made sure to fill my notepad with lots about their technology, products and initiatives. They are among several companies working to add indoor navigation capability to smartphones, using existing onboard sensors and new intelligent software. Their solution concurrently uses multiple technologies including geomagnetic fingerprinting, pedestrian dead reckoning, and map matching, but does not rely on an installed beacon infrastructure. A Spirit app allows store operators to quickly map Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals and collect a Magnetic field map which matches the floor plan of the store’s venue. Spirit claims an accuracy of around 1 meter, which Ruslan proceeded to demonstrate to me in the corridors around the ION meeting rooms.
Theplenary session on Tuesday night was very interesting with a presentation on the results of NASA’s planetary exploration over the last several decades, by Dr. James Green, NASA Director or Planetary Science. I learned a lot about our solar system; much more out there than one suspects, and much to be revealed in the next few years!
GPS World editor Alan Cameron once again led a preview of the planned sessions for the week, with each session chair constrained to a 5-minute rapid-fire presentation aimed at enticing as many attendees as possible. Interesting and somewhat humorous at the same time; we still got a flavor of what was to come in each track.
On Wednesday I was fortunate to be able to interview several show exhibitors. Some of these you will also find in video footage on the magazine’s website, speaking to you straight from the show floor.
Skydel is a relatively new exhibitor, working with Averna, both from Montreal, Canada. Averna makes signal analysis hardware on which Skydel installs software-based simulation of GNSS signals. Skydel’s objective is to be able to make their solution so affordable that every engineer could have one of these record and playback simulators on their desk, rather than having to schedule time on a central, shared multi-function simulator. An exciting new-entry product developed by an energetic group of people with a high level of ingenuity; hopefully they will succeed.
DLR antenna prototypes
A robust receiver initiative from Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), the German Aerospace Center, aims to demonstrate that jamming and interference detection and mitigation can be achieved much more effectively than just at the RF level. Their processing goes deeper with such features as knowing that a source from a particular direction isn’t aligned with the current constellation, so it’s a jamming/interference suspect. Their conformal antenna development attempts to meld an antenna configuration with their signal processing capabilities. DLR is looking for partners to put these developments into commercial receiver applications.
ComNav has a new K700 family of receivers: K-700 GPS L1, Beidou B1 and Glonass L1 80 channel receiver — added to their K-708 dual frequency 198-channel dual-frequency version. The M300 Pro GNSS Receiver package includes a weather-hardened package, multiple interfaces which enable remote internet control and data access, memory and a rechargeable back-up power supply. ComNav claim the M300 Pro has been selected for the Chinese CORS network. ComNav also anticipates a name change in the near future: SinoGNSS will be their new company name.
Harxon antennas and radiosUnicore UB370 Beidou/GPS/Glonass multi-frequency OEM receiver
Harxon gave us an overview of their wide range of antenna and radio products, while Unicore in the next booth described their single and dual frequency receivers which they are now promoting extensively in North America.
NovAtel GAJT antijam systems
As usual, NovAtel had a wide range of products on display. I was impressed that the mil-spec GAJT anti-jam product-line has now undergone testing by both the U.S. and Canadian military, and that the GAJT-AE is now flying and providing guidance protection in hostile jamming environments. Once again there were mentions of NovAtel receivers and antennas being used for research in several technical papers at the conference.
Septentrio continues to make further inroads into the high-precision GNSS receiver market, and announced several new key initiatives. The company has been selected by UNAVCO as the Geodesy Advancing Geosciences and EarthScope (GAGE) facility preferred vendor for next-generation GNSS reference station products. UNAVCO ( ) is a non-profit university-governed consortium, facilitating geoscience research and education using geodesy.
AsteRx-U dual antenna receiver
Septentrio is developing a next-generation reference receiver with UNAVCO’s inputs and evaluation feedback for the purpose of upgrading and renewing their GNSS networks. Septentrio also launched the AsteRx-U and the AsteRx-U Marine multi-constellation dual antenna receivers which incorporate the latest GNSS tracking and positioning algorithms and interference mitigation along with integrated UHF radio, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, cellular connectivity, and a spectrum analyzer which provides users with their interference profile.
Indoor Navigation
ION’s annual Indoor Navigation Demo session on Wednesday afternoon turned out to have more slides and pre-recorded testing content than actual demonstrations. The participants included Nokia HERE, Rx Networks, SPIRIT Navigation, TRX Systems, Broadcom, Indoors and Combain.
HERE was able to initially demonstrate some indoor tracking of an equipped cellphone, but the display for the audience appeared to quit after a short period. They did provide a link to allow attendees to download their software and try it for themselves.
Rx Networks is apparently focusing on self-location for indoor guidance assets, and ran a pre-recorded demo of ‘Zed’ in a Vancouver Mall – but the vertical tracking display part of the video was completely washed out for the audience.
SPIRIT Navigation ran a recording of the demo I had witnessed earlier – a quite effective, working indoor nav application on a smartphone – and then walked around the demo room, but wasn’t able to show real-time results.
TRX Systems ran a very effective real-time demo and was able to show the audience the path of their ‘walker’ as he meandered around the Conference Center, changed levels and eventually returned on cue to the demo room. They use crowd sourcing to build an initial map which then constrains sensor data from standard sensors, similar to several other presenters. This appeared to be the winning demonstration for this year’s indoor nav demo. We did hear later that they were not using sensors within the smartphone, rather a separate TRX device attached to the belt or the ‘walker’.
Broadcom ran an effective demo, albeit with considerable lag between actual and displayed position and frequent jumps between points, presumably due to the same delay problem. This was attributed to the display system used to present to the audience. They also ran a second short in-room demo which was more effective and more real-time, but apparently not as accurate as TRX from the displayed results.
Indoors also use ‘radio’ fingerprinting with GNSS data as a back-up, and Wi-Fi, BLE, magnetic and inertial data fusion along with dead-reckoning. Their recorded demo was quite effective.
Combain has a system which is required to be world-wide interoperable for machine-to-machine asset location, so they are focused on using cell and Wi-Fi IDs for navigation, with databases containing 64 million Cell IDs and 726 million Wi-Fi location IDs. They claimed accuracies of 200 meters for urban areas and 40 meters for rural. These accuracies are not suitable for indoor location so no demonstration was provided.
Pico-second test results (Click on the image to enlarge it.)Pico-second test results
Later, I managed to catch a paper which Locata had recommended, which involved a number of Locata networks used by the U.S. Naval Observatory to demonstrate time and frequency transfer using the USNO Time Standard, with some highly accurate results: picoseconds! This paper forms the basis of GPS World magazine’s October cover story, providing more on these significant time-transfer and synchronization findings.
GRIFFIN Central Processor & Node Antenna Electronic Units
Another significant paper was presented in the Interference & Spectrum issues track. GPSat Systems Australia has been working for some time to implement a jammer/interference detection and localization system. The GRIFFIN 1000 system uses both Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) to locate interference sources. GPSat claims that RF interference source in the GPS L1 band can be detected and geo-located to accuracies of a few meters within a few seconds. The system is already in production, with final production field testing underway, and customer deliveries scheduled for November.
Multi Element Antenna Array and Node Electronics
As ION GNSS+ came to a close for another year, it appears that this GNSS-centric conference is weathering the industry’s apparent preference for other sector shows which may draw new paying customers. ION’s academic/technical content was top-notch as usual, unparalleled anywhere, with attendees flocking to the papers, while existing customers still found comfort in meeting their suppliers on the show floor and around the corridors of the Conference Center. The formula still seems to work for now, but the apparent feeling on the floor was that better exhibitor payback may be found elsewhere, and that this could reduce ION participants in future years. Hopefully not, since this was a very good week for everyone with whom I talked.
sensewhere’s crowdsourcing technology enables precise location information, with no additional infrastructure, in areas where there is no or inaccurate GPS satellite data such as indoors or in tight urban areas.
Tencent Holdings Ltd., a provider of Internet services in China, has completed a strategic investment in sensewhere Ltd., a provider of indoor location solutions based in Scotland. Tencent has also secured a license to use sensewhere indoor positioning software as part of its Tencent Map Location software development kit (SDK) that is available to numerous users across Tencent mobile platforms and mobile services of Tencent affiliate companies.
The investment will help sensewhere develop potential partnerships in China’s mobile Internet space, deliver its mobile advertising service, fuel expansion of the company and its indoor location solutions. As part of the arrangements, sensewhere will be Tencent’s preferred vendor for location-based advertising services in China.
“This investment by Tencent will be significant for the company and is an endorsement of our technology, strategy and ability to deliver low cost, highly scalable and highly accurate Universal indoor positioning,” said sensewhere CEO Rob Palfreyman. “I am thrilled with the collaboration, and having Tencent as a strategic investor will help take sensewhere to the next level and assist us growing our customer base, building new Location Based Services and investing further in R&D.”
“The investment by Tencent highlights the advantage of sensewhere’s indoor positioning technology over other solutions and further cements our position as a leading Indoor Positioning System (IPS) provider,” said sensewhere Chairman Jim Devine. “The planned roll out of multiple services to millions of users across China and contiguous territories which incorporate sensewhere’s enabling technology represents a major step forward towards our goal of providing a truly global solution for indoor positioning.”
sensewhere believes that its seamless, automatic solution for IPS and easy integration with mobile applications and devices will be the driving force behind emerging technologies, such as automatic beacon mapping, wearable technology, artificial intelligence, mobile advertising and using its live database to power next-generation location-based services.
“We believe that a superior, universal indoor positioning technology will deeply influence how people interact with each other, and significantly change how companies communicate with consumers and conduct commerce indoor across online and offline platforms,” said Julian Ma, corporate vice president of Tencent in Mobile Internet Group. “sensewhere’s unique, highly scalable approach will greatly enhance Tencent Map’s indoor positioning capabilities and enable our users to navigate indoor in a much more accurate and convenient manner.”
The video below explains sensewhere’s indoor location technology.
Chris Urmson, Google, speaks at ITS America on the future of the self-driving car.
Plus: Resurgence in indoor location-based marketing, ITS America annual meeting report
Autonomous vehicle technology has made industry-smart people pause and think what the consequences will be if cars and other platforms drive themselves. Will there be a huge increase in traffic when everyone decides to call their cars to grab a loaf of bread at a store? Many of these topics were discussed at the ITS America annual meeting held in Pittsburgh May 31-June 3. In other location news, there seems to be a resurgence in location-based marketing and indoor positioning conferences, leading one to believe that large retailers are finally taking notice.
By Kevin Dennehy
Kevin Dennehy
PITTSBURGH — Chris Urmson, Google’s self-driving cars director, told autonomous vehicle proponents what they wanted to hear during his keynote presentation at the recent Intelligent Transportation Society of America’s annual meeting here. He told them that self-driving vehicles will cut down on the 33,000 U.S. traffic deaths each year (“the equivalent of a 737 falling out of the sky five days a week,” he said) and save time and productivity wasted.
Urmson also said his goal, and his team’s goal, at Google was to ensure son doesn’t have to get a driver’s license, a trend that has become popular with urbanized youth.
The message was upbeat and timely for the crowd of government and university transportation attendees. However, liability issues continue to surround autonomous vehicle development.
“In the end, you are always going to have that guy with the ’57 Chevy in his garage. How do you make the autonomous vehicle work with it? It’s akin to the horse and car,” said Ken Leonard, U.S. Transportation Department ITS Joint Program Office director.
Urmson said he has had “long conversations with insurance companies.” He said that insurance companies are trying to accurately assess risk, and while the model may change, money will still flow, just through a different path.
One ITS America panel discussed security and privacy issues surrounding connected and autonomous vehicles. One panelist said that while privacy may be dead, security is the real big deal with recent reports indicating that cars’ electronics can be compromised.
Others believe it’s going to take more time than Google’s assertion that autonomous vehicles will be on the road in five years. “Lessons from the past temper our optimism. While air bags were patented in 1953, and were introduced on luxury models in the 1970s, it wasn’t until the 1990s before there were big penetrations,” said James Anderson, Rand Corp. senior behavioral scientist. “Key takeaways are automaker opposition about the liability [of new technology] and lack of consumer support.”
The ITS America show floor before the crowds arrive.
Anderson said that yes, the lives saved will be a big driver of autonomous vehicles, but congestion will increase, making way for super commuting. “Public transit will also go through big changes. An economic disruption will occur — do you know how much New York City makes from parking alone?” he said. “Safety doesn’t sell in the early stages, as many benefits don’t go directly to the user.”
Steve Bayless, ITS America vice president of technology, said the solution is not to kill all the lawyers, as there will be continued liability surrounding new in-car technology. “Embedded devices were developed at a time when they were not connected, but the environment has shifted around systems,” he said. “The systems are usually vulnerable because there are poor requirements. Companies have no explicit security policy, or it is poorly specified, or specified too late after design and development.”
Uber Gets Into Autonomous Game
The ITS America’s closing keynote speaker was Uber’s head of global public policy, Corey Owens, who said that one of the best cases for autonomous vehicles was the lack of use by consumers of their cars. “In some areas, owning a car is non-negotiable. But how little these cars are used — as many as 95 percent stand idle,” he said.
Uber announced that Google former head of mapping, Brian McClendon, is joining the company as it develops its own navigation, mapping and transportation systems.
It’s no secret that Uber is targeting continued autonomous vehicle interest, as it created an Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh. It was also rumored that it was a bidder, with Baidu, to buy Nokia’s HERE digital mapping company. (See more on Baidu in Janice Partyka’s June blog.)
One major company trying to find its way into connected vehicles, Xerox, exhibited at ITS America in the show’s Entrepreneurial Village. Xerox has installed its smart parking products in such systems as LA Express Park, ParkyIndy and others.
Xerox has partnered with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor for testing connected and autonomous vehicles. The company is working with automotive OEMs on electronic tolls, parking, mobile payment and other projects, said David Cummins, Xerox senior vice president and managing director of parking and mobility solutions.
The U.S. Department of Transportation booth at ITS America focused on the connected car.
Cummins moderated a panel where small companies talked about new technologies and applications like cities without bus stops where a bus is continually moving to the riders on demand.
In terms of autonomous vehicle use, Cummins envisions an increase in ride-sharing over the next 5-10 years in urban areas. “Initially, there will be a spike in congestion [from autonomous vehicles]. But ultimately, there will be less car ownership,” he said.
Thoughts on ITS America’s Annual Meeting
ITS America celebrated its 25th annual meeting in Pittsburgh to an enthusiastic crowd of 2,000 attendees and 125 exhibitors. However, I am not sure if this conference has grown at all, despite claims it had the largest attendance last year (co-located with the larger, and more private-company-friendly, ITS World Congress in Detroit).
Despite two decades of rhetoric that it is a private-public partnership, the meeting has the feel of a government and university gathering with a few private companies thrown in who want to do business with them. This is a sad thing, as ITS America has embraced the future of autonomous vehicles with excellent speakers.
Having the meeting in the Bay Area next summer will be a good start to altering the perception that ITS America’s annual meeting is just a government show to “show-the-flag” for private companies.
Mid-Year Report on Indoor Location
Earlier this month, executives attended the Place Conference in New York to get an update on indoor location markets and technology for store chains, large department stores and malls. It was also a chance for technology vendors to show new capabilities that have recently reached the market, said Bruce Krulwich, Grizzly Analytics president, who has authored a report on 150 indoor positioning companies.
Krulwich said, as the year reaches it’s the halfway point, new and more accurate systems are hitting the market. “This includes LED lighting-based systems from Acuity and GE Lighting, and proprietary radio technologies from companies like Quuppa, all of which deliver accuracy of around 10 centimeters with very fast response,” he said. “Some companies, including New York-based Spreo, are improving the quality using standard approaches, like beacons and motion sensing. They are achieving strong accuracy and responsiveness through software improvements. At the same time, hardware-based indoor location technologies, such as Ireland-based DecaWave’s chip and other UWB systems, are coming to market inside highly innovative consumer devices.”
Going forward, the biggest challenge is moving from the lab to the real world, Krulwich said. “Deployments such as Game Stop stores and Taubman malls are great moves in this direction,” he said.
In other location industry news:
Note to meeting organizers: Do your due diligence to ensure conference dates don’t overlap. Having two major transportation conferences on the same week was challenging to attend: ITS America Annual Meeting and Telematics-Detroit.
The brass at Nokia continue to court a consortium of German car makers to buy its HERE navigation business, according to Bloomberg. The consortium, which consists of Audi, BMW and Daimler, is hung up on the price tag of $4.5 billion — and the deadline for bidders has passed, according to the story.
A number of large companies are making bids to acquire Nokia’s HERE digital mapping company. At least one analyst believes the interest is fueled by future autonomous ambitions. In other location industry news, a new location-based analytics product hits the market.
Signaling the need to control a major location industry segment, Nokia’s HERE digital mapping company is attracting big-name suitors for as much as $3 billion. According to published reports, the bidders include Uber, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Chinese search engine giant Baidu — and even Facebook.
However, at least one industry insider believes the hoopla for HERE, which is found in a majority of in-dash navigation units worldwide, is being driven by the continued interest in autonomous vehicles.
“Google has been openly working on the concepts required to support AVs for several years and Apple has a skunkworks where they are working on prototypes for an Apple AV. The German luxury car makers realize the bind they could find themselves in — as do all vehicle manufacturers — if Google is able to produce a popular AV-oriented OS that is preferred by owners of AVs over an OS produced by the vehicle manufacturers,” said Mike Dobson, TeleMapics principal, who writes about the topic at www.telemapics.com. “I suspect that Google is really focused on an operating system for autonomous vehicles that can help promote Google’s interest in advertising, but will produce a prototype car to show how the system should work, although avoiding large-scale production. Apple, on the other hand, may be considering producing a vehicle that runs on their OS. So while Google is regarded as a more immediate concern for the automobile industry, the company may also become the vehicle manufacturers’ best friend and trusted supplier, if Apple enters the autonomous vehicle market as a vehicle manufacturer.”
While Dobson believes Uber, which bought mapping company deCarta in March, is playing with fire by bidding for HERE, he says they are clearly concerned what the world of autonomous vehicles might mean for their business. “Within 10 years, Uber will be producing its own fleet of AVs. While owning a map company might be beneficial to them, they might be better off licensing map databases,” he said.
Facebook Not a Good Match
Dobson said that while Facebook, rumored to also be a bidder, can afford the billions to buy HERE, there does not appear to be a significant strategic advantage for them in doing so. “While (Facebook) is experimenting with geographical databases, it is unclear to me that they would significantly benefit from owning a spatial database, as opposed to licensing the data, although their concern may be driven by a fear that the data might not be freely licensed after the company is acquired, say, by a competitor,” he said.
The problem with the automotive consortium and Uber that have surfaced in the quest for HERE, the company once called Navteq — and acquired by Nokia for more than $8 billion in 2007 — is that none are data companies — with the background and nuances of creating spatial databases,” Dobson said.
“From my perspective, that means none of the current bidders are ideal candidates to manage the company. Like Nokia, these companies may not actually know what to do when they win the auction,” he said. “During the eight years that Nokia has owned HERE, the mapping asset has been devalued and improperly positioned for growth. I do not know how much more mismanagement the team at HERE can take before the company and its navigation databases becomes non-competitive.”
Dobson says that Uber, Facebook, Baidu, and the German car manufacturers do not yet understand the expense of upgrading and maintaining HERE’s mapping database for the demands of the autonomous vehicle market. “Buying HERE for ‘internal’ use only would be a significant mistake, so any potential buyer is going to need to continue to sell data to all channels, even those owned by potential competitors. This simple reality will cause any of the buyers who have surfaced so far a lot of heartburn in the future,” he said.
Dobson says the clear winner for the future of HERE is the German automotive consortium of Audi, BMW and Mercedes, with its reported alliance with Baidu. “I do not regard this combo as an optimal owner, but the mix of interest may help keep HERE at the forefront of producing high-accuracy navigation databases — although the extent of map coverage may be a casualty of this ownership team,” he said.
New Location Analytics Product Hits the Market
A new location analytics product is hitting the market in a more and more crowded indoor-positioning field. The differentiator, says Cloud4Wi about its new Fogsense product, is that the unit constitutes the location industry’s smallest Internet of Things Wi-Fi device that is tailored to retail outlets, coffee shops, restaurant chains and shopping malls with presence analytics and location-based services.
The device, which contains Broadcom’s WICED chip, will feature Bluetooth low-power technology in the new version in (the fourth quarter), said Elena Briola, Cloud4Wi’s chief marketing officer. The new BLE version will enable Apple iBeacon and location-aware mobile applications.
“We not only track the position of visitors and customers in the venue, we aggregate this data in valuable analytics and we provide applications to deliver targeted localized services based on these analytics,” she said.
The device is also USB-powered, allowing businesses to scale its integration with both single and small venues, where Fogsense receives power from laptops and point-of-sale (POS) devices, the company said.
“Customers increasingly expect Wi-Fi to be available wherever they go. Businesses can collect valuable data about their customers, better understand their behavior and deliver more personalized marketing initiatives,” Briola said.
Like many location analytics companies, Cloud4Wi believes the new product will enable businesses to design push-targeted, localized marketing and advertising messages based on an assessment of the customer’s behavior at the venue.
The company evokes the much-quoted ABI Research statistics that more than 1 million location retail deployments will occur by 2020.
It has been an interesting month for developments in location. Nokia is looking for a buyer for HERE, the mapping and navigation business that once set the industry gold standard. While carriers are planning how they will comply with new FCC mandates for locating indoor E911 calls, the commercial indoor location market has moved beyond “emerging” and is well underway. It is a confusing ecosystem for buyers of indoor location solutions. And there is yet another mega-entry into the connected vehicle market, Alibaba and China’s SAIC Motor.
With the likely merger of Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia has started looking for a buyer for its digital map and LBS division. The mapping industry has changed dramatically since Nokia purchased the mapping leader Navteq in 2007. Google has become a mapping juggernaut, and less accurate free maps have become serviceable for many types of uses. In fall 2014, Nokia took a EUR1.2-billion impairment charge on HERE’s book value and now estimates the fair value for HERE at EUR2 billion. Possible buyers include Google, Microsoft, Apple and Uber, all companies with deep pockets and hardy appetites.
Indoor Location Market Is Messy. The indoor location market is pulling away from the station, as technology is ready and there are applications and use cases primed to get started. Unfortunately, the market is chaotic, teaming with companies offering solutions with various levels of accuracy, infrastructure requirements and cost. An ideal indoor location technology would provide at least 3-meter accuracy, be cost effective and fully universal, working anywhere on all devices. It doesn’t exist, but the competing technologies, all with trade-offs, will find applications that fit. For instance, the precision required in locating an apartment in the case of an E911 emergency call differs greatly from the pinpoint accuracy need by an app that directs a shopper to Lucky Charms cereal on an aisle crowded with boxes.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All. There is more to an indoor location technology than accuracy. “Accuracy is important, but so is universality, the ability to work everywhere and in all phones. So is cost, in terms of the investment required from a site deploying the technology,” asserts Bruce Krulwich of Grizzly Analytics. “Universal technologies can win in the market even if they’re less accurate, and technologies with cheaper infrastructure can win even if they’re less accurate than those with expensive infrastructure. High-end systems can deliver sub-meter accuracy to those willing to pay for it.” Grizzly Analytics just completed a comprehensive report on the indoor location market.
Test First. Each of the numerous companies vying for the indoor location market makes claims regarding accuracy, availability/coverage, latency and battery usage. Judicious companies that invest in indoor location systems would be wise to test the claims of vendors. “Making a fair comparison among different indoor location offerings is complex, and nuances in how the testing is performed need to be controlled to ensure an apple-to-apple comparison,” asserted Khaled Dessouky of ComVerity. “It is important to use an unbiased methodology that relates to your use cases.” Dessouky managed the neutral test bed for the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) for indoor E911 calls.
Quuppa. An interesting highly accurate offering comes from Quuppa, a Finnish company with a bunch of high caliber researchers spun off from Nokia. Like some others, they are using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons, but add angle of arrival (AOA) algorithms that pump up the precision, which they self-report to be 30 centimeters to 1 meter. With this performance, Quuppa has been used in sports to track hockey pucks and athletes’ movements during game play for coaching, player load monitoring and infotainment that can be broadcast during the game. The use of this type of high-precision location in health care settings is compelling. Patient flow management, security and critical asset tracking can be improved with precise positioning technology. Quuppa is a system that likely wouldn’t be used in apps that locate a coffee shop at a mall, but for uses that demand high performance and can spare some expense, it is compelling.
And Yet Another Mega Entry. The number of companies vying for a piece of the connected-car market keeps expanding and getting more international. E-commerce giant Alibaba and SAIC Motor, China’s popular car maker, together set up a $160 million fund to develop “car on the Internet.” Alibaba will be leveraging its communications, entertainment, map and cloud-computing services. The company joins a group that includes Google, Apple, Baidu and Uber in challenging auto makers.
Following a 2015 test, the U.S. retail chain is integrating beacon and Bluetooth technology with its mobile app. The app will show the shopper’s location in real time as they move about the store (with a familiar blue dot), and display nearby sales and deals.
